I met mine at the park, were I hang out with a bag lunch, feeding the ducks.
At school. One from High school and one from college.
I lost touch with school and childhood friends when we moved. All my friends since then – best and otherwise – I’ve met at work.
He kicked me in the balls with an iron-toed boot at an Iron Maiden concert.
Seriously.
One in the break room of the movie theater we both worked in. It started with a cheesy pick up line and went from there.
The other I met on these boards, and IRL in her home.
Probably at my grandparents’ house. She’s my cousin and she’s only 3 months older than I am.
It was at a sort of party at church when I was 15. She had just joined said church and asked if I was going to a different party at someone’s house, which I was. We’ve been best friends for nearly 20 years now, which, now that I think about it, is sort of mindboggling. :eek:
Study hall freshman year of high school. My close seconds were met online and at RHPS. So school, internet, and movie theatre in the generic.
I met my best friend when I was 6, on the schoolyard. She was new to my school, and was sitting in the corner playing with rocks by herself. I ran over to her and asked her if she wanted to play tag with myself and my friends. We currently live 5 hours apart, but we make the trip to visit each other as much as we can.
My bff and I met in high school, I a sophomore and she a freshman, in choir/show choir/theater geek type activities (ETA: OMG! 18 years ago!!!). We’ve had our ups and downs, spent some time not talking, but she’s still my sis in my heart. She lives about 6 hours away now, and I haven’t seen her in two years, but she’s coming home for Christmas, which I’m crazy excited about!
My other two best friends (yes, that’s an abuse of the English language. I don’t care.) I met at herb/massage school, and we were part of a spiritual order together until that blew up, and now we just hang out and occasionally work or teach together. We’re not as close as we were when our school was our church and our place of employment, but we’ve got each others’ backs any time we need each other.
My sister.
The other two “closest” friends I met on my first day of college. We were all floor and wing mates in my dorm.
Woo! Gardner Hall '97-'98!!!
I can’t pick just one best friend; I have three and we’re sort of a “Gang of Four.” We’re all from the same hometown, I met them, respectively, in diapers (her parents were close family friends of my parents); in first grade; and sophomore year of high school. The four of us still get together twice a year for “Girlfriends Weekends”, even though that now involves transcontinental flights. They’re the girls I went to Europe with this fall, what we called “running away from home,” an awesome trip we had been planning for seven years. As a crew, we four are really tight, but I doubt any of us could pick just one as THE best friend.
It’s sort of odd, because none of us are were ever real clique-y or into group social activities; we tend to be fairly solitary bears, except when we get together. 
Fourth grade, elementary school, on the playground.
My best friend and I lived in the same dorm freshman year. We first met though when we sat at the same table in the cafeteria the first day it opened. Now, this cafeteria is in the shared basement of a couple of dorms, and so on our way out, the two of us missed the stairway to the outside world and ended up in some dark tunnel full of locked doors and dripping pipes. Finally we made our way back to the cafeteria and found the way out. I don’t know why, but our collective incompetence convinced us that we should be friends – and we still are.
I was living in a hotel with my future roommate. Was sitting on the bed drinking stale beer and watching “Too Young to Die” when he walked in with a lovely young goth girl in heavy eye make-up and long, auburn hair. The three of us went out for coffee and I told her my sad story up to that point. When we parted ways, she handed me a slip of paper with her phone number and a quote from what she couldn’t have known was one of my favourite children’s books: Whisper, the Winged Unicorn:
“Do not find fault with yourself because you are afraid,
there is not a creature in the forest who does not know fear.”
And that’s how I met my best friend.
Sitting next to her in class in a first-year lecture; we doodled on each other’s pages while the professor flicked through her Powerpoint slides.
One in my 1st grade classroom, one in my 5th grade classroom.
Colonel Muster, in the Ballroom, with the lead pipe.
I met my best friend because she was the younger sister of one of the girls I used to skip school and smoke weed with. She was the quiet, shy little sister in the bunch. All of the girls I hung out with have fallen off, but my best friend is still there. I love her to pieces!!!
I met my best friend, of all places, at work. She came in one day as a new hire, and it just went from there. We have a lot in common, and try and do things together outside of work when scheduling permits.
Thankfully, we have a pretty laid-back work environment and are able to talk and joke while at work, so it makes up for the fact we can’t always get together after hours as much as we’d like.